[ad_1]
The CHEOPS space telescope provided details to scientists on the planet called WASP-189b, an extreme planet by most metrics. This planet is about 20 times closer to its closest star than our Earth is to our Sun. This planet is more than 1.6 times bigger than Jupiter, which in turn is about 318 times bigger than Earth.
This planet is hot
The planet WASP 189b is always looking in one direction relative to its closest star. One side is the day side, the other is night, in perpetuity. Due to the nature of this planet, while orbiting its closest star, it exists with temperatures of around 3,200 degrees Celsius (5,792 degrees Fahrenheit). It’s very, very hot.
“Planets like WASP-189b are called ‘Ultrahot Jupiters,'” said Monika Lendl, lead author of the study from the University of Geneva and a member of the National Center for Planet Research Competence. “Iron melts at such a high temperature and it even becomes gaseous. This object is one of the most extreme planets we know of so far. ”
The star near WASP 189b is known as HD133112. This star is 3,360,000 km in diameter, about 2.4 times the size of our Sun. This star is about 2,200 degrees Celsius hotter than our Sun and is about 730 million years old. This star rotates at such extreme speed that it is no longer a sphere, but an ellipsoidal one. This is a star that burns so hot that it appears blue instead of yellow / white.
Only a handful of planets are known to orbit such hot stars, and this system is by far the brightest, ”said Willy Benz, professor of astrophysics at the University of Bern and director of the CHEOPS consortium. “We look forward to more spectacular exoplanet findings from the CHEOPS observations. The next works are already in preparation. ”
NOTE: In the Twilight Zone episode “The Midnight Sun”, history suggests that our planet Earth is getting closer and closer to our Sun. Planet WASP-189b appears to be holding steady, just hot, very hot, for the foreseeable future .
Images up and down VIA ESA 2020 For more information on this latest study, take a look at EDP Sciences Astronomy and Astrophysics and the article “The warm side of the day and the asymmetric transit of WASP-189 b as seen by CHEOPS”. This research can be found under the DOI code: 10.1051 / 0004-6361 / 202038677 according to the authorship of M. Lendl, Sz. Csizmadia, A. Deline, L. Fossati, D. Kitzmann, K. Heng, S. Hoyer, S. Salmon, W. Benz, C. Broeg et al. for A&A.
CHEOPS update
CHEOPS is a satellite that is part of a mission of the European Space Agency in association with Switzerland launched in late 2019. On 18 December 2019, the Soyuz-Fregat launcher sent CHEOPS into space at the ESA spaceport in the French Guiana in South America.
For the mission that focuses on this space telescope, the University of Bern collaborated with the University of Geneva, whose observatory is also home to the CHEOPS Science Operations Center. With this mission, ESA hopes to learn more about the thousands of exoplanets already known throughout our universe, characterizing the lot in the best possible way.
